(San
Francisco, California) Like other gay men in their golden years, Jack
Norris and Seymour Sirota had heard the horror stories.

An elderly lesbian couple
is housed on separate floors of a nursing home and kept from seeing each other.
A gay retired college professor feels compelled to keep his sexual orientation
a secret after his roommate at an assisted living facility asks to be transferred.

``I thought, 'We are not
going to be in that situation,''' the 67-year-old Norris says crisply. ``This
is not going to happen to us in our final days.''

That's how the two New Yorkers,
partners for 14 years, landed at Rainbow Vision, a just-completed senior community
in Santa Fe, N.M. From the private dining room named after Truman Capote to
the cabaret where '60s teen icon Lesley ``It's My Party'' Gore was scheduled
to appear this weekend, everything about the 146-unit retirement village was
designed with the comfort of graying gays and lesbians in mind.

As the generation of gay
men and lesbians who came out in the 1960s and '70s reaches retirement age,
about a dozen specialized senior developments across the country are either
up and running or in the works.

In such senior-heavy locales
as California, Arizona and Florida, as well as less traditionally gay-friendly
places like North Carolina and Texas, builders have found a market in a segment
of the gay population that worries getting old will mean going back in the
closet.

``In a retirement community,
you want to be with people of like minds and like interests, whether it's
a golf community or a religious community,'' said Bonnie McGowan, who is spearheading
Birds of a Feather, a second gay senior complex in New Mexico. ``Until I feel
safe walking down the street holding a woman's hand ... and not feel like
I'm going to offend even one person, there is a need for this.''

Besides personal safety,
specialists in gay aging issues offer other reasons why the so-called Stonewall
Generation, named for the 1969 New York riots that marked the beginning of
the modern gay movement, needs and craves places of its own to retire.

Among them are the years
of stigma and isolation many gays who are over 50 experienced, that may have
left them estranged from their families, financially insecure and childless.

``There is a real sense
of disenfranchisement and also a sense of independence, of 'I don't want to
be dependent on family, I want to be dependent on community,''' said Judy
Dlugacz, founder of the San Francisco-based lesbian travel company Olivia
Cruises and Resorts.

Olivia is currently scouting
land in the Palm Springs area for what Dlugacz hopes will be the first of
several high-end resort communities geared toward mature lesbians who are
looking either for a vacation home or a place to retire.

Joy Silver, developer of
Rainbow Vision, also plans to expand to Palm Springs, a desert community already
popular with gay tourists.

``Back in the day, we could
identify each other because the only place to be gay was a gay bar,'' said
Silver, who views her Santa Fe property as somewhere for baby boomer gays
to live their later years as residents of a majority.

``Now, we have more options
and we may be more out, but it's still going to be hard to find friends or
partners,'' she said. ``It doesn't help to live in a gay-friendly community
without any other gay people.''

Along with second chances
Silver is planning to throw a prom party ``for those of us who didn't go to
senior prom with the person we wanted to'' Rainbow Vision was designed to
foster a sense of immediate belonging.

The fitness center was named
after lesbian tennis pioneer Billie Jean King, for example, while services
for those requiring ongoing medical care reflect lessons learned from the
AIDS crisis. The 26 rented assisted living units comprise a section of the
complex called The Castro, after the San
Francisco neighborhood that has long been a center
of gay culture.

``Just as we have set the
trends in music and fashion, (gays and lesbians) will be setting trends for
the redefinition of family and community,'' Silver said.

Steven David, a postdoctoral
psychology fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles who counsels
and researches older gay men, said the concept of gay senior housing gets
mixed reviews from his clients. He has spoken to some who think living in
a gay environment sounds fun and others who think it sounds awful, ``just
like some straight people like retirement communities and some don't.''

Meanwhile, some in his field
oppose the idea of separate communities for gay seniors, which also have taken
off in Canada and parts
of Europe, as voluntary self-segregation.
``There has been an argument of, 'Should we be creating these places in the
first place or forcing society to accept us?''' he said.

For his part, Jack Norris
says that battle can wait for the next generation.

He spent years in a job
where he had to silently endure anti-gay jokes. Sirota, who is 80, did not
tell his family he was gay until the two men got together.

Norris said even talking
publicly about their new life at Rainbow Vision felt like a revolutionary
act.

``Seymour was worried maybe
we would be getting too much exposure,'' he said. ``But then I said, 'We need
to be like Rosa Parks. We can't sit in the back of the bus.'''